Yahoo Publisher Contextual Advertising Network Forum

Unfortunately continued (since January for us) bad (totally unacceptable) ad targeting has emptied the theater. I can hear crickets in the audience, the band has packed up and the lights growing dark. Too bad, we had such high hopes for the performance. Perhaps another new production will be advertised later and we can all buy another ticket to see the show Fish Texas

It's not just YPN that has terrible targeting. We have an overture/YSM feed that we specify the keywords to match, the results are still awful!

Cause: Not enough inventory, poor algo and too many people willing to take any traffic they can get.

Spoke to a senior member of staff at YSM and they didn't even know about some of the obvious problems that they have... so there's little hope it'll be fixed soon if they can't get it to work well when you specify the search you want adverts for!

This is what I posted on the YPN blog... sorry for the typos and repeating myself..lol I'm just so upset with YPN it's unereal!

I would like to post this and hopefully people will read this because it's all the truth... YPN was it at one point! I was making $50,000+ a month until YPN started to take it away little by little. They took out my ad targeting because of advertisers complaining about conversions. ADVERTISERS PLEASE TAKE NOTE! When you advertise you are NOT gauranteed anything! Let's say I go out and pay $5,000 to advertise in a newspaper, and I get a 5% return from it, I'm happy.. If I don't get anything in return it's just money I lost I guess... YPN instead punishes publishers because of this and takes away features that were there in the begining to use. it states in the publisher's control panel and I quote...

Tips for Publishers Question: Is there an easy way to better target my ads to match the interests of my users?

Answer: Yes. You can use the Ad Targeting tool to target ads based on your users' interests. Simply go to the Ad Targeting page under the Ad Setup tab and use the drop down menus to select from 20 categories and 109 subcategories. Then type your target URL into the dialog box and click Save. Once saved, you'll be able to manage categories for each of your targeted URLs. For more information on Ad Targeting, review our FAQs.

Well guess what? I did just as it says.. I catered my ads to my users' interests! And I got mine taken away.. They clicked on thier own free will.. I didn't trick anyone into clicking like so many sites STILL out there with images next to the ads... My site users were clicking because they wanted to. not because of trickery... Not only did they take my ad targeting away, but they took my money... Money that they were making as well... Don't make no sense to me.. Then when I call and ask them to give me my ad targeting back since I didn't break the TOS they tell me that they can't.. Once they take it away it can not be given back, is what they told me. Why not?

I did everything according to the TOS and I always called to make sure I was doing the right thing. I never made my pages live until I got an OK.. Then if something is OK one day I get an email the next week that I have to change it because it's not according to thier TOS.. These people that we call are not all on the same page! They don't communicate with each other or with the actual people that make the rules and TOS...

My advice to all publishers is this.. STAY AWAY FROM YPN! Do NOT sign up to be a publisher! You will get teased and then almost everything taken away! TRUST ME! I did not do anything wrong according to the TOS or anything for that matter for my Ad Targeting to be taken away from me. yes I may be repeating myself, but I'm so frustrated. and I am sure you would be to if you made $50,000+ a month down to maybe $3,000 a month with the same amount of traffic, page impressions etc.

It's a shame that a company does this to the very people that are making them money... They need to wake up before it goes down before it gets out of beta... and that is thier exuse for everything.. "We are still in beta" blah blah blah...

You know something is wrong if a program has been in beta for this long... they can not get thier stuff together! And I do not think they will because they will loose out on so many publishers..

Publishers are what makes YPN the money! Yes advertisers pay them.. but if it wasn't for the publishers the ads would only be on Yahoo sites. And guess what YPN? You wouldn't make as much money!

I'm sure they will delete this message so go right ahead YPN.. Hide the truth about you cheating the very own people that are making you the money!

YPN will not last much longer if they don't change.. So many blog posts and forum posts I see throughout the net about YPN cheating them and doing this and that... It's just not me!

Google Adsense is the king and will remain the king if YPN don't get thier heads out of thier A$$e$!

I'm sorry you don't care about what advertisers get in return for paying you a lot of money. However, since anyone paying that much DOES care what they get in return, it is appropriate for them to shift the money to a publisher who cares more about giving them a good value. Yahoo is their agent in this.

In fact, I think your letter could be useful to Yahoo in selling their services to advertisers. Advertisers would be thrilled that the steps being taken to exclude unwanted sites is working so well.

Anytime you are making a ton of money, returning little in exchange, and not trying to help your real end users you shouldn't expect it to last. Never does. The reasons vary, but if you're not providing a real service the big money won't last.

As you can not tell I am providing a "real" service.. I provide ad space for the ads to show up on MY site... A site that I pay money for bandwidth, scripts, licenses etc... So yes I did make a lot of money.. But if publishers would take warning then there will not be ad space for their ads to display... It's a shame that we as publishers are pushed to display ads that we can not control... My point is that I was displaying ads that I controlled with Ad-Targeting and did make money because my users did click voluntarily and now I am punished for it and got it taken away from me and now I am making close to nothing compared to what I was making...

Alot of the ads say that they are related to something and then they are not when you go there... Why would you have a ads show up that are related to cars when you have a computer product related site.

I targeted ads relating to things that I thought my users might be interested in instead of the ads being so-called contextual (non ad-targeted) and I would get more clicks and of course more money... this is what publishers want... MONEY MONEY MONEY... it's not about the advertisers... They spend the money on thier own free will to advertise thier site or product.. it's a gamble.. there is no gaurantee on a return if any... It just sucks that we as publishers are "PUNISHED" for something that we are ment to utilize. And I did just that. I used to to cater to my users' interests. and now it's gone!

granted... But you as an advertiser need to understand when you put your money into it there is no gaurantee it's going to convert.. and you advertisers want to sit there and wine about it to yahoo.. We as publishers can not help if the advertisers sites' are either poorly done or have things that users don't want what you have to offer. So why punish the publisher for doing what he is supposed to do according to the TOS of YPN?

Advertisers need to just suck it up and stop complaining. Atleast you get to write it off on your taxes!

It just sucks when I have 3-6 times better clicks on Google than Yahoo.. and yes I have gone back to Google 100%.. But it's a shame that here I was making that extreme amount of money through YPN and then advertisers want to sit there and wine and cry about things so YPN changed things around to cater for the advertisers. Yes the advertisers bring in the money but without the publishers you advertisers wouldn't have your ads displayed and Yahoo don't get no money! Like I said before, it's not our fault that advertisers have poorly designed sites or the ads the create are not relevant to what they are advertising just to get traffic to thier sites.

To create an attractive landing page that interests the visitors to buy their product and give a professional image.

BOTTOMLINE: The more accurate the ad copy and the better the landing page, the more conversions.

In a sense, the sites that they are displayed on play a somewhat small roll in conversion once the visitor sees the ad copy and clicks. If your ad isn't accurate, misleads what you sell and your landing page looks awful and unprofessional, you will get the wrong visitors that aren't interested in buying...no matter WHAT site it comes from. Especially if your landing page is not good "sell" copy.

Publishers:

To create a quaility website, that facilitates a visitor focused environment. Use of the ad program should help the visitor.

To abide by the TOS and guidelines set-up so not to inappropriately draw "clicks" or misrepresent the program.

To remember that it is an advertising/income opportunity, we can either use it....or not. They owe us nothing...except to provide what they claim.

BOTTOMLINE We can choose to use or not. If we follow their program guidelines and it's not working for us for any reason such as poor quality advertisers, un-targeted ads or just not generating enough income, we can choose to jump ship.

Yahoo/Google

To provide targeted ad content to publisher sites.

To have guidelines and best practices for both Advertiser & Publisher.

To provide quality customer service for both parties.

BOTTOMLINETo provide an ad service that has enough opportunity of exposure for the advertiser and maintains quality referrals for publishers to recommend to customers.

To provide enough incentive (financial & quality advertisers) for a publisher to want to show ads on their sites.

To provide advertisers with a quality network of websites (that match their products)to display their ads.

One is not more important than the other, both have to work together for a program like this to work. Each side also has to look at it from the other point of view.